Loki Season 2 departure casts doubt on the MCU show’s future
Where does Loki’s soul lie?
As of now, there have been five Marvel Cinematic Universe series on Disney+: WandaVision, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, Hawkeye, and Moon Knight. The most eventful and visually interesting of the bunch was Loki, which took the trickster god’s trademark chaos and blew it up into a series that unleashed the concept of “variants” and the multiverse that’s wreaking havoc in Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
It’s also the only MCU series renewed for Season 2, but will the show still have that electric quality? An update from the head writer of Season 1 casts doubt on the series’ future.
Michael Waldron, the head writer for Loki Season 1 and screenwriter of Multiverse of Madness, told Digital Spy that his longtime collaborator Eric Martin was going to take on the role of head writer for Loki Season 2. This isn’t the first major change to Loki’s creative team, as director Kate Herron left after the Season 1 finale and was replaced by sci-fi director duo Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson.
Kate Herron, Michael Waldron, and Kevin Feige promoting Loki at the D23 Expo in 2019.
Herron and Waldron spearheaded the creative vision for Loki. What will the show be without them? It’s unclear what role Waldron will take for Season 2, but no longer being the head writer is sure to affect the show somehow.
The main question this raises is just where the heart and soul of Loki came from. Was it great because of the plot, the direction, Natalie Holt’s innovative music, or Tom Hiddleston’s performance? Was it a combination of all these elements?
With director Kate Herron out of the project and Michael Waldron stepping back, will Loki Season 2 disappoint?
Loki Season 2 will answer this question, and maybe reveal why Marvel has held back on renewing more of its shows. With movies, directors and writers can swap and change the tone without interrupting the flow of the narrative. For example, Taika Waititi’s vision for Thor: Ragnarok was different than Alan Taylor’s vision for Thor: The Dark World, and the franchise benefited because of it.
But television is a different game, and Loki has to create a cohesive Season 2 that not only matches the lightning-in-a-bottle energy of Season 1, but also propels the action even further into a post-multiverse MCU. A new creative team could be a gamble that pays off big, or they may make the case that Loki should have always just been a single season.
Loki Season 1 is now streaming on Disney+.
